they are. Anybody resisting my troops will be shot dead on the spot. Any panic will be considered a resistance attempt.
The Earthmen will soon be allowed to leave the spaceport. Before that, however, they are considered to be hostages and they will be killed if they take any hostile actions towards us.
Ladies and gentlemen, have a good day. Goodbye.'
Immediately after the announcement, Kissur's fighters, present in practically every lounge, custom corridor, restaurant and shop jerked their assault rifles up at the ready position and screamed, 'Everybody down on the floor! Ass up, hands behind your head! Go! The majority of people submitted obediently, dropping in the process the souvenirs they just bought — Inis lacquered figurines and flat wooden bottles with Chakhar vodka. This order effectively stopped panic (that was to be treated as resistance). Occasional gun bursts above the heads took place; five spaceport security service employees attempted to escape — four were shot dead and the fifth died two hours later at a surgery table.
In the air traffic control room, assault rifles were aimed at the workers and the latter unquestioningly obeyed Khanadar's directions — to announce Assalah, without getting into any extra details, to be a closed-off zone. Therefore, the ships that were not on the landing trajectory yet, should go land anywhere the hell they want but not in Assalah; the ships that were already moving on the landing trajectory should continue landing.
The pilots are a well trained crowd and they were accustomed to landing the way they were told to. The last two ships had time to figure out that they were landing in a spaceport taken over by terrorists. Attesting to the professional level of their crews, the ships didn't vacillate in the air — that could've been very dangerous — and landed in the spaceport. After the landing, they immediately required a permission to launch; the permission was refused.
At least, not a single ship crashed missing the launching chutes; it would've been very probable if the air traffic controllers had panicked.
The flight schedule board in the main lounge blinked and went dead. Then, an announcement appeared on it, 'Long live the party of people's freedom!' The announcement was written in Weian and English. The English variation contained a grammatical mistake.
There were total of eight thousand people in the spaceport, five hundred volunteer and regular security service employees, twenty three hundred of regular personnel and fifty two hundred passengers.
About four dozens passengers, mostly journalists, recognizable thanks to their cameras, were pulled out of the crowd and brought to an office. Kissur and his younger brother Ashidan sat there and young Ashinik with the old man Yadan represented the zealots. Kissur offered the guests to take part in the inspection of the spaceport and he added that he would rely completely upon their honest reports. Afterwards, the whole Galaxy saw the pictures made by these journalists.
The following is an excerpt from the testimony given by Francis F. Carr, an employee of a large auditing firm Coupere, Lir and Gambacher; he had been among the forty selected hostages. Mr. Carr gave this testimony to a senate committee during an investigation concerning the spaceport's takeover a month and a half later.
'Why did they pick you?'
'I don't know. Two fighters approached me, one of them stuck his finger at me and they took me away. They didn't speak English. I thought that they were going to shoot me.'
'Did they beat you?'
'Frankly, I got a good kick in the butt and, when we were passing the peasants, somebody threw a rotten tomato at me.'
'What did they fighters do?'
'They screamed something at the crowd and they cleaned the tomato off me.'
'What happened next?'
'They took me to a large room, there were already about thirty people there. A lot of journalists were there and nobody obstructed from taking pictures. Kissur and his brother sat at a table together with the leaders of the party of people's freedom. Kissur told the journalists to save their film — he was going to take them on a trip through the spaceport and they would get good shots there.'
'What happened next?'
'Kissur said that he demanded that everything photographed was shown on Galactic channels. He said that the films should be sent to a place that had broadcasting equipment and that the broadcast should be shown on all channels. He said that they had agents on different planets and that if the broadcast started later than 9am of the next day, he would shoot five hostages for every minute of delay. Somebody asked what would happen to the hostages if his demands were complied with. Kissur said that he was not enough of a scoundrel to make eight thousand Earthmen hostages in his future fight with Gera. Then, they asked him why he had seized the spaceport and he said that it was the only way to expose all its secret depositaries. He said that it was impossible to pick a moment when no passengers were present in the spaceport and that he didn't know any way to prevent panic spreading among civilians but to make them drop on their bellies and to shoot a dozen or two as an example. They asked him what he was going to do with the passengers and he said that after the broadcast was shown, he would free the hostages.'
'What about the personnel?'
'He said that he had to detain the employees that were necessary for the proper operation of the spaceport.'
'Have you witnessed any abuse of the passengers?'
'Yes. I saw a terrorist hitting a man with his rifle's butt only because the man rose without obtaining permission. Also a guy, sitting on the floor, stretched his legs; a terrorist thought that the guy was trying to trip him and the fighter hit him with his knee in the temple.'
'What else has Kissur said?'
'He said that he had arrived at the spaceport to defend his friend Bemish. Then, he obtained reliable information that the military had been transporting toxic gas in a ship and that they were going to use it against the protesters. He had tried to persuade Bemish's deputy, an Intelligence Service employee Giles, not to utilize the gas. The latter said, 'Shut up, Weian monkey.' Kissur shot Giles.'
'Have you seen the gas?'
'Yes. In a ship that was one of the latest to arrive, neurotoxin containers made up half the cargo. The containers were marked as a military cargo accordingly to the standard rules of the Federation Space Force. We were the first ones to enter the ship and the journalists photographed everything.'
'Are you aware of the fact that the Federation defense department claims that it does not own these containers?'
'Yes, your honor.'
'In your opinion, could Kissur load the containers before showing them to you?'
'That would be impossible. When we stood at the loading dock, the after landing warning lights were still lit on the board and they were just dragging the crew outside.'
'What happened next?'
'They took us down a lot of storage areas. Quite often, the goods that were stored there had nothing to do with custom department's documentation describing them. More precisely, it was practically never the case. Cars were called medical equipment, computers were called canned food. I saw boxes of Lamass lace that were exported as glass.'
'Were you offered any explanation?'
'Yes. The goods that were not duty free were documented as goods that were. Most export-import companies had a life expectation of less than two months. I don't know how corruption in customs looks on other planets but I was shocked by what I saw there. They didn't steal by containers, they stole by whole cargo loads.'
'What happened next?'
'Finally, they took us to an area of space field that was almost never used for the civil flights. The chutes there looked slightly different from the civil ones. They showed us papers demonstrating that these chutes were intended for military ships. There were certain differences in construction between military and civil chutes, for instance ceramics deposition on the support columns allowed a ship to have a launching acceleration of five to six
